298 Haley onidce. 



rapacious birds, viz., that it reproduces in castings, or small pellets, 

 the fish bones and other indigestible parts of the living creatures 

 it has swallowed, and these pellets in time cover the floor of the 

 hole in the bank in which it dwells, and form the nest on which 

 it deposits its beautiful transparent white eggs. On no bird have 

 the old heathen poets and naturalists exercised their fancy more 

 than on the Kingfisher, and among other strange tales they used to 

 fable that this bird would sit on its floating nest for the seven days 

 of incubation, and that it had such power over the winds and 

 waves that, though in the depth of winter, a perfect calm always 

 reigned during that period, when mariners might cross the sea in 

 perfect safety ; and hence came a well-known saying, ' Halcyon 

 days/ which has passed into a proverb for any short season of 

 tranquillity. As Dryden says : 



* Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be 

 As halcyons brooding on a winter's sea ;' 



and in Wild's ' Iter Boreale ' we read : 



' The peaceful Kingfishers are met together 

 About the decks, and prophesy calm weather.' 



In Sweden it rejoices in the lengthy name of Bld-ryggig 

 Is-vogel, or 'Blue-backed Ice-bird/ and Professor Newton says that 

 the Anglo-Saxon name for it was Isern or Isen, for in hard frosts 

 it often collects in some numbers around any open water, and being 

 conspicuous as it sits on the ice, a name signifying ' Ice-bird ' has 

 been applied to it in all the Teutonic languages.* In 1613 

 it was one of the victims denounced as a ' ravenous bird/ and 

 persecuted accordingly by law ; and under one pretext and 

 another it has been hunted down ever since ; so that were not 

 its numbers recruited every year by the arrival of emigrants from 

 Holland, this, the most brilliantly coloured of all our indigenous 

 birds, would bid fair to become exterminated in England.f As 

 it is, however, I do not think its numbers are much diminished 

 in the county generally. If I am told by Rev. E. Goddard that 



* Fourth edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds,' vol. ii., p. 451. 

 t Cordeaux's ' Birds of the Humber District, 5 p. 71. 



